page_title: Red River Rebellion
section_title: Background
hierarchical_section_title: Red River Rebellion / Background
caption_attribution_description: English: Upper Fort Garry in the early en:1870s, circa 1872 / en:Fort Garry, Manitoba Credit: Topley / en:Library and Archives Canada / PA-011337 http://www.collectionscanada.ca/archivianet/020115_e.html
context_page_description: The Red River Rebellion was the sequence of events that led up to the 1869 establishment of a provisional government by the Métis leader Louis Riel and his followers at the Red River Colony, in what is now the Canadian province of Manitoba. For a period it had been a territory called Rupert's Land under control of the Hudson's Bay Company.
  The Resistance was the first crisis the new federal government faced following Canadian Confederation in 1867. The Canadian government had bought Rupert's Land from the Hudson's Bay Company in 1869 and appointed an English-speaking governor, William McDougall. He was opposed by the French-speaking, mostly Métis inhabitants of the settlement. Before the land was officially transferred to Canada, McDougall sent out surveyors to plot the land according to the square township system used in the Public Land Survey System. The Métis, led by Riel, prevented McDougall from entering the territory. McDougall declared that the Hudson's Bay Company was no longer in control of the territory and that Canada had asked for the transfer of sovereignty to be postponed.
context_section_description: During the late 1860s, the Red River Colony of Rupert's Land was changing rapidly. It had developed under the aegis of the Hudson's Bay Company, which had a continent-wide trading and commercial network. They had been confirmed on this territory by Queen Anne, who had evicted from it Louis XIV and his subjects through the 1713 Treaty of Utrecht. Further notice was given when in 1763 George III dispossessed Louis XV of nearly all his North American colonies in the Treaty of Paris.
  Historically, the population had been composed mainly of Francophone Métis, who developed an ethnicity of mixed First Nations-French descent and a unique culture during the decades of the fur trade. During the 18th and 19th centuries, they married among themselves, establishing a tradition of the men working as trappers, guides and interpreters to fur traders, as well as developing farms. Métis women also were sometimes active in the trade, as among several influential families in Sault Ste. Marie in the early 19th century in which the husbands were European. The Métis culture was based on the French language and Roman Catholic religion.
  From the later 18th century, as English and Scots men entered the fur trade, they too married into the Ojibwe people and other First Nations in this region. Their mixed-race descendants were generally English-speaking and were sometimes known as the "country born" (also as Anglo-Métis). The third group of settlers to the region were a small number of Presbyterian Scottish settlers.  More Anglophone Protestants began to settle there from Ontario in the 19th century.
  The newer settlers were generally insensitive to Métis culture and hostile to Roman Catholicism, and many advocated Canadian expansionism.  At the same time, many Americans migrated there, some of whom favored annexation of the territory by the United States. Against this backdrop of religious, nationalistic, and ethnic tensions, political uncertainty was high.  To forestall United States expansionism and bring law and order to the wild, the British and Canadian governments had been for some time negotiating the transfer of Rupert's Land from the Hudson's Bay Company to Canada. The Rupert's Land Act 1868 authorized the transfer. On December 1, 1869, Canada purchased the territory.
  In anticipation of the transfer, the minister of public works, William McDougall, who along with George-Étienne Cartier had been instrumental in securing Rupert's Land for Canada, ordered a survey party to the Red River Colony. Catholic Bishop Taché, the Anglican bishop of Rupert's land Robert Machray, and the HBC governor of Assiniboia William Mactavish all warned the federal government that such surveys would precipitate unrest. Headed by Colonel John Stoughton Dennis, the survey party arrived at Fort Garry on August 20, 1869. The Métis were anxious about it, as they did not possess clear title to their lands but held a tenuous right of occupancy. In addition, the lots had been laid out according to the French seigneurial colonial system, with long, narrow lots fronting the river, rather than the square lots preferred by the English.  The Métis considered the survey to be a forerunner of increased Canadian migration to the territory, which they perceived as a threat to their way of life — more specifically, they feared to lose their farms. The larger fear was for losing their language and Catholic religion, and facing marginalization and discrimination in their homeland.
caption: Fort Garry circa 1872
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